It is common for personal computers and workstations to provide a graphical user-computer interface environment made up of a simulated desktop, windows and icons. The user is provided with a keyboard and a cursor movement device such as a mouse or track ball to manipulate data on the display screen. The simulated desktop establishes the desktop metaphor for the user interface. The simulated desktop is the screen or surface on which the user performs work. This "desktop" is the background on which objects (icons and windows) are placed.
Icons: Icons are small pictures which represent available objects. They can reside directly on the desktop or in windows on the desktop. An icon may represent a document a user is writing, a program, or a directory, etc. The contents of the object represented by the icon can be viewed through a window. The icon can be opened into a window.
Window: A window is a frame for viewing some object. Windows are normally standardized to provide a common framework for the variety of information with which users work. Standard components of a window are the window title bar and border. The title bar shows the title of the particular window. The title typically identifies the information (object) that is currently displayed in the window.
The user can manipulate the windows by moving them around on the desktop (screen), and sizing them. The user can also open and close windows as they perform their work. The content of each window is generally not under the control of the user, but rather is controlled by the program creating the window. It is helpful to a user to be able to write notes on windows on the desktop just as one could write notes on a piece of paper on a real desktop.
Special purpose word processing systems for attaching annotations (text and audio) to documents are known. For example, CLARKE, et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,424,575) describe a word processing system which allows text to be displayed with added comments separately recorded. B. A. Barker, et al. (Method for Interactively Entering Comment Data Into Documents, IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, February 1985 p.5119) describe an interactive text processing system which allows a user to selectively enter comment data which is normally hidden from view at a desired point in a text file. When the user selects the comment option from the menu displayed by the text processing system, the system inserts a window with blank lines at the destination to permit entry of the comment. When the operator ends the comment, the system inserts an icon representing the comment at the destination. In these techniques, the notes are manipulated and stored by the program which manages the application window; therefore, the technique requires that each application program be modified to implement the note function.
T. G. Holzman (On Line Highlighting And Margin Notes, IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, March 1992, p481-484) describes a user interface that provides a way for users to make and view margin notes for those documents by using "slide-out windows." To insert margin notes, the user begins by using the mouse to mark the area of a document to which the margin note will refer. The user accesses the Edit pull-down menu's "Margin note" option. The user then types a margin note into the slide-out window. The user saves a margin note by pressing the "Save" pushbutton on the margin note window. Once a margin note is closed, the note "slides" back into the document out of immediate view. A "tab" is affixed to the border of the primary window for the document. The corresponding margin note can be "slid out" anytime the user sees the indicator on the border of the primary window by simply double clicking on that tab. The note is tied to a specific portion of a document like a true margin note and is stored with the document. Since the notes are stored as part of the document, this technique cannot be applied to arbitrary objects managed by unmodified programs.
G. P. Seaburg (Background Scribble Pad for OS/2 Desktop, IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, July 1991, p.155-157) describes a program called "Scribble Pad" which creates a computerized version of the traditional desktop blotter by providing a place to write notes on the system "background" area (desktop) by using the system mouse or other pointing device. "OS/2" refers to IBM's Operating System/2.
Sticky Pad Version 3.0 is a productivity tool provided as a part of OS/2. The tool allows annotations or notes to be written. However, this tool is limited in its power in that notes are not persistent across sessions; it relies on the OS/2 window handle which exists only while the window is open. Sticky Pad allows notes to be attached to windows but is limited to that instance of the window; therefore, once the window is closed the notes lose their association with the window and are left on the desktop. For example, if a user's annotation is simply used as a reminder as to where in the document the user left off and the user closes the session and returns the next day, the notes are no longer associated with the document and the user cannot rely on the place marker note. The user must remember the associations and re-associate the notes from the desktop to the related windows.
Microsoft Corporation's commercially available Note-it program creates notes that are persistent across sessions unlike Sticky Pad; however, they lack generality. Microsoft Note-it notes are only created and displayed in the context of a Microsoft application that has enabled Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). This means that the application programmer has to actually have done some coding to enable the use of Microsoft's Note-it. Thus, it is not general to any application that displays itself in a window.
The commercially available Treadz Click-it program creates notes that are note-focused instead of object-focused. This means that one must be aware of the notes and work from them rather than focus on the task or object. For example, the Treadz user would see a bulletin board with notes displayed. The user would read each note and from the individual notes they would access the associated object to which the note referred.
In a published European Patent Office application (EP-477173) Levine, et al., describe a document processing system for combining voice with visual annotations input through the stylus and keyboard assembly for documents. A document for annotating is generated from a window of a multi-window support program running independently of the annotation program in the data processing system. Levine's annotations are not associated to any system object. The "documents" are captured display screen images of the contents of windows. The "documents" may be saved in persistent storage but there is no association between the "documents" and the original window contents. Levine's invention is, therefore, not general and cannot be used to annotate arbitrary objects.
Thus, the prior art does not provide a note facility which creates a persistent association between a note and an object in a window that is general and is focused on the object.